We cannot allow the senator’s resignation to be the end of the matter. There must be an investigation for the sake of the health of the democracy

Sam Dastyari has a talent for vanishing. He can materialise, and then disappear, sometimes in the blink of an eye – one of his party tricks.

At 5.45pm on Wednesday, it was time to vanish and he resigned from the frontbench. The word inside Labor is that there was more uncomfortable material to come, and second-chance Sam was already on his last warning.